23rd September 2009 Archive

Intel has given further insight into its attempt to build a better reputation as a provider of integrated graphics products, specifically as its takes the IGP out of the chipset and builds it into the CPU.

The light has finally gone out on Facebook Beacon, the user-data-sharing ad system that creeped out so many netizens after its launch in the fall of 2007. But Mark Zuckerberg's social networking empire has other schemes for squeezing dollars from user data.

The ramp of 10 Gigabit Ethernet for servers is just getting underway, and the use of 10GE networks for linking storage to servers is barely in its infancy. Fibre Channel over Ethernet being more a topic of conversation than a deployed technology.

The Swedish armed forces have been hit by a major equipment problem, according to reports. Flimsy military brassieres are unable to stand up to the strains imposed when female Swedish troops perform "rigorous exercises", routinely bursting open or even catching fire - so forcing busty young conscripts to hurriedly strip off in the field.

North Wales Police are quite happy to assert that the law is what a police constable says it is – as opposed to what is written in statute. This is backed up by a polite note from their Press Department, and what appears to be a slightly less polite piece of online blogging from the Police Constable whose public behaviour raised this issue in the first place.

In its broadest sense, service management goes beyond IT service management and looks to influence many of the processes which underpin the activities a business engages in. Previously, we asked how you thought service management had changed in your organisation in recent years. Let’s dig around a bit further.

The benefits of IP telephony (IPT) are now increasingly understood, and as offerings proliferate, we are starting to see wider scale adoption become reality across all types of business. But has the move to IPT been all it’s cracked up to be?

Demon Internet sent thousands of business and government subscribers an email this morning telling them all about a new e-billing system, and tacked on details, including passwords, for 3,600 customers.

The US Army, seeking to embiggen its green image, has proudly announced the building of the world's first bridge made from recycled plastic and able to support heavy loads. To test the recycloplast bridge, troops drove a monster 70-ton Abrams Main Battle Tank across it.

In a printing market awash with colour products, here comes HP with an A4 black-and-white business laser. But far from seeming dull, the LaserJet P3015d serves to remind us of how good HP lasers are – and how much better they can be than much of the flashier competition.

DAB radio usually gets a flailing from Reg readers, and that was before this summer's "switch-off" controversy. Former FreeView chief Tony Moretta has the job of steering the DAB ship through such controversies as head of the Digital Radio Development Bureau, and here's an extended Q&A with him conducted recently.

Radical Think Tank Open Europe has this week exposed a study by the EU that could lead to the creation of a massive cross-Europe database, amassing vast amounts of personal data on every single citizen in the EU.

The well-off popstars' club The Featured Artists Coalition - featuring such national institutions as Pink Floyd's Nick Mason - could hardly have imagined what it started when it issued a rallying cry three weeks ago.

The NetScaler VPX virtual appliance for network application acceleration and load balancing, which Citrix Systems previewed to customers back in May is now shipping. It comes with shiny new list prices that are lower than physical NetScaler MPX appliances running the same software.

A Californian firm has carried out the first untethered flights of its alcohol-fuelled hover rocket, able to take off and land vertically and potentially offer ballistic flights beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

The French Senate passed the revised Hadopi legislation yesterday by 251 votes to 131. The legislation creates a typically French bureaucratic infrastructure, which oversees a range of sanctions against internet copyright infringers, including €3,000 fines and ultimately disconnection.

In five years' time, Intel will be selling more system-on-a-chip products than mainstream microprocessors. So said CEO Paul Otellini yesterday. It's a bold claim and one that warrants closer consideration.

Mozilla is planning to radically overhaul the “dated and behind” Windows version of its browser’s user interface by considering the introduction of a Microsoft Office-like Ribbon in its Firefox 3.7 release.

LiveJournal's security team has disabled some media features on the blogging site after a quick-spreading worm stole user email addresses and caused entries designated as private to be available to everyone.

A US bank is suing Google for the identity of a Gmail user after a bank employee accidentally sent the user a file that included the names, addresses, tax IDs, and loan info for more than 1,300 of the bank's customers.

Motherboard and server maker Super Micro Computer is showing off a new double-density blade server that's based on its Twin family of half-width (not half-wit) motherboards, and is bragging that it has industry-leading density - and that's meant to be a good thing, not the kind your boss succumbs to.

Commercial Linux distributor Red Hat continues to buck the economic meltdown, reporting sales up 11.7 per cent to $183.6m in the second quarter of its fiscal 2010 and net income up 36.9 per cent to $28.9m. The sales were above the high end of Red Hat's guidance.

A federal judge fundamentally misinterpreted a patent asserted against Microsoft Word, an error that should require a $290m infringement penalty to be overturned, attorneys for the software giant argued Wednesday.